he Post
Office, because he knew that the postal authorities only desired to
make use of him to fight the coach proprietors. But having been
informed that it was the intention of the Post Office to discontinue
the mail-coach whether Bianconi took the contract or not, he at length
sent in his tender, and obtained the contract.

He succeeded in performing the service, and delivered the mail much
earlier than it had been done before. But the former contractor,
finding that he had made a mistake, got up a movement in favour of
re-establishing the mail-coach upon that line of road; and he
eventually induced the postage authorities to take the mail contract
out of the hands of Bianconi, and give it back to himself, as formerly.
Bianconi, however, continued to keep his cars upon the road. He had
before stated to the contractor, that if he once started his cars, he
would not leave it, even though the contract were taken from him. Both
coach and car therefore ran for years upon the road, each losing
thousands of pounds. "But," said Bianconi, when asked about the matter
by the Committee on Postage in 1838, "I kept my word: I must either
lose character by breaking my word, or lose money. I prefer losing
money to giving up the line of road."

Bianconi had also other competitors to contend with, especially from
coach and car proprietors. No sooner had he shown to others the way to
fortune, than he had plenty of imitators. But they did not possess his
rare genius for organisation, nor perhaps his still rarer principles.
They had not his tact, his foresight, his knowledge, nor his
perseverance. When Bianconi was asked by the Select Committee on
Postage, "Do the opposition cars started against you induce you to
reduce your fares?" his answer was, "No; I seldom do. Our fares are so
close to the first cost, that if any man runs cheaper than I do, he
must starve off, as few can serve the public lower and better than I
do."[3]

Bianconi was once present at a meeting of car proprietors, called for
the purpose of uniting to put down a new opposition coach. Bianconi
would not concur, but protested against it, saying, "If car proprietors
had united against me when I started, I should have been crushed. But
is not the country big enough for us all?" The coach proprietors,
after many angry words, threatened to unite in running down Bianconi
himself. "Very well," he said, "you may run me off the road--that is
possible; but while